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This blog serves my columns as an archive, a place to add footnotes,data sources and drafts of my weekly 550 word column for the Sky Hi News.(www.skyhidailynews.com) Often these drafts are posted on my Facebook page, The Muftic Forum.. To learn more about the posting subject, click onto the links at the end of the posting.Blog will be on vacation May 28-June 25 2018, with sporadic to no postings during that time.
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Wednesday, June 19, 2013

I thought I was up on newspeak vocabulary until the exposure of the word
“metadata” by a former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor, Edward
Snowden. Snowden spilled the beans to the Guardian publication that the NSA was
collecting “metadata” on everyone using Verizon communications. “Metadata” was
a new one on me. What is it , does it
help keep us safe, and is it constitutional?

The online Merriam Webster dictionary defines Metadata
as “data that provides information about other data”. The
first known use of word “metadata” was in 1983.

In fact, I was employed in “metadata” as a college student working in the central
circulation file of the library filing Dewey Decimal system index cards.There were card catalogues full of 3x5 cards,
filed in a particular order.You gave the card to a clerk to fetch a book,
or you made a note of the decimal that gave you the location in the shelves and
found it yourself. These cards were metadata, information about
an author or a title, but they contained no cliff notes of the contents of the publication.
I still had to do the grunt work of reading the book.
In these days of modern computerized technology, the ability to collect and
store data has been amplified multi millions of times. Such is the metadata the
NSA has been collecting on Verizon telephone calls. It contains dates, times,
location, and the telephone numbers to and from, but it does not contain the
content of the calls or the names associated with the numbers.It is an index used by US intelligence officials to connect dots on terrorist networks in and
out of the US that some or to spot patterns of calls to certain
numbers.To get the substance of the contact, a warrant (court
ordered permission) would have to be
issued by the secretive FISA court, with specifics of who, what, and why ,
evidence of probable cause or reason to believe the suspected number was
connected to a terrorist. The right to conduct such a surveillance is an
interpretation of the Patriot Act of2002.To what extent does collecting
metadata protect us?.We have been given two examples, the Zazi attempt to bomb
New York subways and David Headley, connected to the Mumbai bombing. We have been promisedmore examples of where such surveillance
stopped attacks.
What was curious about a subsequent statement of Snowdenwas his carefully worded claim that "I, sitting at my desk, certainly had
the authorities to wiretap anyone, from you, or your accountant, to a federal
judge, to even the President if I had a
personal email. “ It appears he
is referring to his alleged authorization, but inability to tap phones due to a lack ofemail addresses.But for some shrill talking heads on media to
claim with certainty that Big Brother was” listening to your telephone conversations”is
misleading, given what we know so far.
Is the telephone metadata collection and storing unconstitutional?The ACLU filed a lawsuit against the US
government last week in federal district court arguingthat the telephone metadata program is in
violation of the First and Fourth Amendments of the Constitutionand that the government’sinterpretation of the Patriot Act is wrong. The US
Supreme Court will be ultimate decider,
but on the issue of Fourth Amendment rights, the ACLU faces an uphill
fight.In 1979 Smith v. Maryland, the
Supreme Courtheld that the use of a register(telephone numbers of calls made and
received)was not a "search" within the meaning of the Fourth
Amendment, and hence no warrant was required. The Supreme Court rarely reverses
prior decisions, so that chances are collecting telephone metadata without a search
warrant will continue to be constitutional.

For comments on White House Syria policy
changes, see www.mufticforumblog.blogspot.com

Friday, June 14, 2013

Intervention by the US in the Syrian civil war might lead to a political settlement. It did in Bosnia.

Below is a reposting of a column I wrote regarding Syria and what
could be the best endgame of a US intervention in their civil war. It is pertinent now, over a month later, but the mechanism for some
political settlement has been set up. It appears that Russia, who
agreed to the political mechanism for negotiation, has continued to
supply Syria with heavy weight armaments and the momentum in the war has
swung to the Assad side. Pres. Obama, bitten by not so good outcomes
in Libya and Iraq, has procrastinated in his decision until now, and
hopefully it will not be too late. He received a push from former Pres.
Bill Clinton, urging humanitarian intervention, which might give Obama
some domestic cover to protect him from the ire of the liberal wing of
the Democratic party.

The irony of Clinton's statement
is that Clinton's reluctance to take action in the Bosnia conflict
resulted in 100,000 killed and 2 million refugees and the coining of the
phrase of "ethnic cleansing" while he dawdled. It took enormous
bi-partisan effort to get him off his dime and finally working with
NATO, a no fly zone was created that equalized the power of those
fighting the Serbian attempt to carve out greater Serbia from Bosnia.
The result is that ultimately there was a political settlement in the
Dayton Accord that resulted in the end of fighting and killing. There
was also a mechanism set up to bring to justice the perpetrators of the
ethnic cleansing campaign in the war crimes trials in the Hague, which
is still on going.

The quandaries regarding Syria are many: Will armaments supplied to the rebels be enough to equalize the civil war so that both sides see value in negotiation? It took a no fly zone to bring Serbs to the Dayton Accord, but Russia, backing Assad, is calling such a no fly zone against international law. So far Russia has not said what it would do if a no fly zone became a reality. Is a bad Assad better than a continuing civil war in Syria post Assad? , The turmoil would continue because it is a religious/ethnic conflict and if Assad left, that does not address the root cause. Both sides seem capable of committing atrocities and the more radical Islamist groups could likely be able to hijack the rest of the rebel side. . Will the US be flying solo or can it convince other Western European countries to join in? Once we get in, can we get out or will we be visiting another post war Iraq or Afghanistan?. Or will it be an ungovernable Bosnia that we have now, but at least sans bloodshed? What sort of endgame is there? Is Bosnia and example of the best endgame, even with its faults. Even to this day peacekeepers from 24 countries are still stationed in Bosnia to make sure the Dayton Accord is enforced. Some thoughts are contained in

a version of my following post that appeared in the Sky Hi Daily News during the week of May 8, 2013.:

Syria’s civil war is emerging as a US foreign policy crisis and there is a gnawing feelingof “been
there, done that in Iraq and Afghanistan”.While it was probably a mistake, last
year Pres. Obama drew a red line that would trigger greater US involvement if Syrian Pres. Assad’s used chemical weapons. There is some evidence Assad
did.

Empty threats risk future threats not being taken seriously
and the president has been under pressure to make good on his threat. At least Obama
is right in being cautious now. All of his options carry risks. Ethniccivil wars like the one in Syria are the tar
sands ofoutsider intervention; easy to
get into anddifficultto get out of , and risk spreading conflicts beyond borders.

The New York Times reported Israelwiped out Syria’s main chemical weapons
facility and long range missile storehouses last week. While
the strikes served Israel’s purpose to take out Syria’s arming Hezbollah in Lebanon, itmay also have made the chemical weapons redline issue moot. Noone
is claiming Israel’s strikes were a proxy for making good on a US threat,
butit served that purpose, too.

Military aid to the rebels and no fly zones should still be
on the table because they promote an end
that serves our national interests. . Israel’s airstrikes demonstrated the
weakness of Syria’s air defense and the feasibility of enforcing no fly zones. Boots
on the ground have wisely been ruled out
by about everyone in the US. We learned some hard lessonsin Afghanistan and Iraq.

The situation on the ground has changed since last
year,with Al Qaeda- likeorganizationshijacking many of the rebel groups and with fewmoderateforces left to arm. Our
weapons could fallinto the wrong hands,
making the situation more dangerous. We can only hope our intelligence
assessments are accurate.

Giving military
aidand enforcing no fly zones
couldbe the catalyst to get Russia to force Assad to step down, sincemilitary aid to the rebels could tip the stalemated
conflict against Assad. The final outcome is still mostly in Russia’s hands.
Assad is their client. Russia’s reluctance to force Assad out is
understandable. The fall of Assad could put Al Qaeda like rebels in charge,closer to their borders.

Russia may be gambling that ourreluctance to get involved will not change. Beware. We found ourselves eventually caught up in the
Balkan Wars in the 1990’s as the former Yugoslavia broke up. Media
coverage ofethnic cleansing , fleeing
refugees, and the shelling of Dubrovnikand SarajevoturnedUS public opinion aroundto supportintervention.Western countries
also feared Bosnia could become a stronghold for Al
Qaeda Europe.

Duringthe Balkan
conflict NATO put only peacekeeper boots on the ground, but they enforcedno fly
zones and bombed Serbia during the Kosovo conflict. Military aid flowed freely to all parties,
with Russia supplying Serbia and the West backing Croatia.

The conflictin the
Balkanswas ultimately resolved by diplomats and the agreements contain
models that could benefit both Russia and the West in Syria. Croatia
and Serbia were carved from the former Yugoslavia.These new nations were left with even fewer ethnic minorities though these were already areas with historical cohesiveness. Croatia
joins the European Union this July and
last month Serbia agreed to enter in negotiations to resolve Kosovo’s status.

Bosnia, still
balanceddemographically between Muslims, Croatian Catholics, and Serbs,is a less successful result of the
settlement. Ethnic factions are hunkered down in cohesive geographic sectors, barely working together cooperatively on a
national level.At least the shooting,
ethnic cleansingand threat to Europe was
stopped.

Syria also has some religious cohesive regions . A Balkanized
solution just mightwork for Russia and
the US.

For Felicia Muftic’sBalkan background, visit www.mufticforum.comColumn translated into Croatian is also posted at www.mufticforum.com

Footnote:
The New York Times today reports that Secretary of State John Kerry
will be in Russia today meeting with their President and high ranking
officials to discuss a negotiated settlement. It appears that either
the threat of US military aid to the rebels or a switch in the view of
what Russia believes to be in their self interest has changed. Whether
the Israeli strike figured into the equation is not known, but it did
demonstrate the fear that the Syrian civil war would spread which would
not be in the interest of either Russia or the US.

Wednesday, June 12, 2013

How much personal freedom are we willing to give up in the
name of homeland security? That’s the political question that erupted last
week. The underlying legal question is whether interpretationand application of the 2002 Patriot Actpassed to protect us from terrorist
attacksis constitutional.In the
long run, the Supreme Court may make the decision for us.

At issue is the
potential violation of the 4th Amendment to the Constitutionwhich requires warrants forsearch and seizurethat are based on probable causeand have specifics that some violation of law
is suspected.The 2002 Patriot Act
authorizes some types of warrantless searches.

Details of the workings of the Patriot Act had been kept hush hush until a British publication, the Guardian, opened the
worm can. It published leaks from a
former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor that warrantless gathering of
informationwas conducted on all of
Verizon’s telephone calls (Sprint and AT&T, too, revealed later) and that
there was surveillance contents ofinternet communications of suspected terrorists
and their connections abroad.

Colorado has become a high profilefocus of the debate. Colorado Democratic Senator Mark Udall, member
of the Senate Intelligence Committee, has consistently voted and spoken out against the
Patriot Act,because he objected that warrantless telephone call metadata mining was
kept secret from the public andwas conducted on telephone customers whether
they had terrorist connections or not . On CNN Sunday Udall told Candy Crowley “that it was not
clear the program gave information that could not be found elsewhere” in
thwarting attacks .

Others including the
Presidentbelieve the telephone metadata program is
helpful . CBS News Saturday reported that the telephone metadata collection
enabled theapprehensionof Denver resident Najibullah Zazibefore he could carry out aplot to bomb the New York City subways in
2009.

It seems creepy to know evenlimited phone data is being collected and it leaves many, including me,
with a gnawing fear that someone in the future could get their hands on the
data base to use itfor witch hunting.

Another surveillance
program exposed by the Guardian is called
PRISM. It allows the NSA to tap intothe
content of internet communications of suspected terrorists abroad, including
the content of those communications of non US citizens in the US communicating with
them. Warrants are issued by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance (FISA) Court
good for a year. While acknowledging PRISM’S effectiveness in
thwarting terrorist attacks, Sen. Udall
objected anyway since “some Americans have been swept up in it”.The administration expressed outrage that
exposingPRISM damaged American’s security interests.

Trusting the user is not enough; are the controls enough to
protect us from abuse?.

What is this FISA court, anyway?Eleven judges are appointed by the Chief
Justice of the Supreme Courtfor seven
year terms. It works in secret and deals
with classified information related to terrorism, in order not to blow the cover off covert operations and tip
off suspects. The Court informs the Senate and House intelligence committees of
their rulings. The telephone metadata mining is reauthorized every three
months.

Wide spreadcollection of telephone metadata is limited
to numbers, length, date, and location, though customers’ names are not
collected.To access content or conduct
wiretaps, warrants still must be sought from the FISA court.

This is still a dangerous time .The Boston Marathon Bombing, the Ft Hood
shooting, and the nearly successful Times Square and New York subway bombers involved
difficult to detectlone wolves living
in the US.We would not like to handicap
our government agents executing their mission.

Civil libertarians, left and right, are not waiting for
Congressional action. They are threatening to take the issue to court which
will ultimately decide the constitutionality issues.

For more, visit www.mufticforumespanol.blogspot.com

This is a version of my column which will appear in the www.skyhidailynews.com this week

Friday, June 7, 2013

The Fact Check.org , highly respected, independent, funded by the Annenberg Foundation
poked enough holes in the Heritage Foundation claim of the $6.3 trillion cost due to immigration reform to call it false.

"Critics of a bipartisan Senate bill to overhaul the nation’s immigration
system falsely claim that it will cost an additional $6.3 trillion,
citing a study by a conservative group that opposes the bill."
...for the rest of their analysis, see http://factcheck.org/2013/06/the-immigration-bills-6-3-trillion-price-tag/

Wednesday, June 5, 2013

The “scandals”seem
to be heaped one on top of another on the White House lately. While there is some fire in the substance,
the hyperventilated, over the top smoke blown mightilyby the GOPis also about the 2014 midterms. It
is a political strategy that issound
and fury likely to signify little in the end.

The GOP seems
determined to pin the problem on Pres. Obama, best if he can be found to be the
actual perpetrator (and so far they have failed to do that), or at least the
head ofan overreached, out of control, incompetent
administration.Therefore, the GOP hopes
the President will be so wounded, Congressional and Senatorial elections will go
their way as voters become disgusted with anything tied to him.

The GOP views the rollout of Obamacare like a fox salivating at the possibilities of
catching chipmunk in a rock garden.They
hope Obamacare will fail miserably. They
have laid the groundwork to selffulfill
their prophecy.Whenever some southern and Midwestern governors and state legislatures were in GOP control, they have refused to set up the
state managed exchanges…resulting in the mistrusted feds having to do it for
them and leaving a gap of millions who would not have access to expanded
Medicaid or Obamacare. They have cut out funds slated to encouragecurrently uninsured into subscribe to the subsidized exchanges, hoping if they built it, no one came.

Except where they have tried to sabotage the roll out, the
GOP is taking a risk. The roll out might
work…because California, Colorado, and Massachusetts, and New Jersey and Pacific Coast states are well prepared .
The cost of the subsidized premiums in California have come in much lower than
actuarial studies predicted.Colorado is
well ahead of the game, already testing technology and with 17 private insurers signed
on to participate.

Where the GOP will be
able to howl in protest and point to failure will be in states where they
arealready strong. All politics in electing representatives
and s enators are local.They will be
preaching to their choir,safe in gerrymandered non competitivedistricts. Any
failures of the roll out could blowback on the GOP when the successes in other
states could be contrasted with the bungling in the purposefully unprepared
states.

The GOP has tried to inflate the “scandals”by painting them as “Nixonian”.In
their zeal to try to draw comparisons of Obama with Nixon they fall very flat. Nixon himself ordered the IRS to audit politicians, groups and journalists on
his enemies list.It was not a case of bungling by career service bureaucrats and an overprotective White House staff, as it
appears involved in this current
“scandal”.

The attempt by Nixon to hush up the Washington Post was not because
the CIA or national security was jeopardized by their reporting. The Watergate
coverup was his directed attempt to cover his role in a criminal act. However,
itwas AP’s and Fox’s reporting of the
leakthat blew the cover off covert
action against Al Qaeda in Yemen, endangering our war against terrorists, that
triggered the Attorney General’s investigation.

Nothing this year equals the Iran Contra Scandal in which the
Reagan administration skirted laws to run
Central American covert actions, or the revenge seeking W Bush administration
blowing CIA operative Valerie Plame’s cover.

As a strategy, even these more substantivescandals havenotchanges theparty domination in the immediately following
elections in the past. Economic issues were always larger factors.

So…fire away GOP.Voters
will begin asking where is your replacement for Obamacare or what you will do about
employment and the disappearing middle class. A GOP blocking immigration reform will only feed Democrats’ winning demographics. Those are the real game changers.

For more, visit www.mufticforumespanol.blogspot.com

This is a version of my column that will appear in the Sky Hi Daily News this week.

About Me

Felicia Muftic is a political columnist with the Sky Hi Daily News, Grand County, Colorado. She writes on current events from a pragmatic, fact based, reasoned perspective.
Felicia has nearly 50 years of involvement in politics, finance,and consumer affairs as either a fly on the wall in international, national, state and local levels or a participant.
Parallel to all of this is intense involvement for over 50 years in the the political process, serving in both cabinet and staff in the administration of Mayor Federico Pena . Partially educated in Europe and married to physician-refugee from the Balkans, her interests are not confined to US domestic problems, but she also has a world view and experiences which are often reflected in her columns.
Felicia Muftic es un columnista político del diario Sky News Hola, Grand County, Colorado. Felicia tiene casi 50 años de participación en la política, las finanzas y de asuntos del consumidor, ya sea como una mosca en la pared en la internacional, nacional, estatal y local o de un participante. Para más información, visite www.mufticforum.com